There's a lot of electoral college calculators out there at the LA Times and elsewhere that let you play "what-if" with the upcoming election. I love clicking the maps and seeing what's likely, and finding the most likely scenarios, and discovering the ones that result in an electoral tie (which likely means another Bush term via the courts or congress).

By far my favorite of these maps, though, is this little applet that distorts the size of each state to show its importance to the election in terms of its votes in the Electoral College. Massachusetts is bigger than both Dakotas plus Montana. California is HUGE. So are Texas, Ohio, Florida, Illinois, New York, and Pennsylvania. Everything else is a lot less important. It gives you a sense of what matters most to the campaign operatives and insiders.

And all those vast sweeps of red in the Dakotas, Kansas, Idaho, etc suddenly look pretty puny. You can stuff all the High Plains states into New York without even trying very hard. Ah, so satisfying.